MonteCarla

If you're looking for PBAoE's and targeted AoEs instead of cones, I guess Electric Blast and Radiation Blast spring to mind first. I've used them for Blasters and Defenders who I want to live in melee and its worked well for me. Water and Fire both get a non-cone AoE and a rain/patch AoE which would work in melee. Sentinels don't get damage auras, but Dark Armor has Oppressive Gloom and Cloak of Fear. No idea if CoF is worth putting damage procs in? It could take Cloud Senses and two Fear ones.

The realistic scenario for "Sentinel Regret" that some people are trying to convince you is a real problem. You make a Sentinel. They dish out damage and can take it. After amassing large amounts of influence you can afford a theory-crafted Blaster who does a bit more damage and is just as survivable. So, then you can go and make that Blaster too. There is no problem with Sentinels. 🙂

Cool. Nice work on pumping up the global recharge. A couple of nitpicks, since I'm on a big Empathy kick just now: - Fortitude seems under-slotted. It's your main team protection buff, so I always try to slot of for defence and recharge, so I can shield as many people as possible with it. Red Fortune x5 + LotG Unique maxes out the global recharge from it, without compromising it's own recharge too heavily. I try to keep this on all the Blasters/Controllers and Def/Corrs on the team at the very least. My alternative slotting would be the lOTG unique and frnakenslot with 3 or 4 Def/Rech's. -Adrenalin Boost doesn't need slotting for End Mod - it already gives your target more energy than they can possibly use. I usually slot that with 5 x Doctored Wounds, or just two recharge IOs if I'm saving slots. And I'm not sure if Superior Invisibility needs the extra slots. It's Defence bonus is pretty small. I'd look at moving slots to Fortitude.

Going from a Controller to a Defender, you're trading AoE control for AoE damage. The biggest source of this by far is your nuke. Take Aim (Seismic Forces to you), and slot the Gaussian chance to Build up in it (Adds +80% damage for 5 seconds). This give you a 90% chance of it adding +130% damage instead of just +50%. Use this before your nuke and do them both as often as possible! And drop a Tar Patch first, of course. For Meteor, you probably also want to slot a KB to KB unique. (I'm not yet there on my first Seismic Blast character)

I love that Crey one. I'd always assumed the Voltaic Tanks and others were just guys in Iron Man suits. This implies something much more permanent and horrific. And yeah, this is all part of making a living breathing city, having the idle animations that play out before you engage.

If it all goes well - I come up with a character idea based around a name, a look and powersets. I workshop them in the first few levels, maybe team up with some other players and chat in character to help that process along, and it all comes together. They then carry on with that costume and backstory until 50. This happens with like 80% of my creations, with 20% going on beyond 50 to Incarnate out because I want to keep playing as them. Sometimes it doesn't quite work out. I'll retire a character in their 20's or 30's if they haven't quite taken shape. This is usually that I haven't figured out who they are, or they're no fun to roleplay. Sometimes I dig them out again and rename them, or give them a new costume, often changing the backstory into something that I like more. The gap can be as big as years. And for whatever reason, Scrappers often stall at 40 for me. I think its the lack of desire of anything from the epic pools, whereas others are hanging out for their epic armor, or a big melee attack for Defenders, or something that fills a hole.

Things you can do as players today at the start of the task force: - Hop into the Supergroup Base Portal next to Synapse (use TAXI-4000) and buy the End Drain Resistance buff from the Empowerment machine. - Visit the P2W Vendor in Atlas and everyone stock up on Plasmatic Taser and Hand Grenades if you don't have a good source of AoE damage already. This will all take 5 minutes while recruiting, and make it go a lot smoother. The worse Synapses I've had have been where we had a lot of single target specialists. (And I kind of like having a long-ish task force without unskippable cutscenes as an opportunity to chat with other players, in or out of character)

I have Stone Cages with just an Accuracy IO slotted (to keep enemies grouped on Eathquake and Volcanic Gasses). That sounds perfect! Thanks again!

Ooh, good idea! I've never built towards that before - time to revise my plans a little! https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Category:Sets_that_improve_Slow_Resistance Winter's Gift unique in Flight gives 20%. Two pieces of Blistering Cold in Kick gives +10%/15% (Catalysed) And I could probably lose Obliteration in Whirling Hands for 2 pieces of Avalanche and frankenslotting for another +10%/15% That would be 50% recharge debuffs for one slot, slower flight and losing 5% global recharge. I think I'm sold!

Having a defensive toggle (like say Temp Invulnerability) doesn't do much for you. It means the toggle can be reactivated quicker if it goes down. Getting global +Recharge set bonuses, on the other hand, is THE BEST use of IO sets, and my default aim for any new character. It's not impossible to get +100% global recharge from sets. Nukes and Build Up, long recharge AoE controls, your best attacks, all come back quicker. LotG +Recharge uniques play a big part in this because a) The bonus is great for just one slot b) They obey their own "Rule of 5" - you can have 5 of them, and other +7.5% Recharge bonuses like Basilisk's Gaze or Sting of the Manticore.

I've always been partial to FF/Sonic on Defenders, adding a nice offensive debuff to the most defensive primary. Both sets got improvements this year, so even better now.

I've seen it said several times here that Dominators have one of the biggest gaps between baseline performance and kitted out IO set performance. I do not disagree. In their base state, Dominators are like control-heavy damage-light blasters, relying on active defence to stay alive, with an on-again/off-again mechanic of Domination that lets them handle bosses. With Set IOs this becomes permanent, and Dominators have mez protection and decent passive defences, and can dish out boss-level crowd control. A well-built Dominator is a combination Controller, Scrapper and Blaster. Who do Carnie Master Illusionists fear? Perma-Dominators, that's who! Lock them down in one swift move before they can pop their pets out! This guide is for players with a couple of 100 million lying around, and takes you through how to enjoy the power of Perma-Dom as early as possible. It's a very satisfying journey, watching that global recharge number increase and the magic of Perma-Dom fall into reach. My levelling habits I slot attuned enhancement sets as early as feasible, and with Dominators its always recharge as an exclusive goal. Secondary to that I'll go for Defence. Round about level 30, I'll start to experience chain-Domination, where you sometimes get one Domination kicking off after another, but not always. By 40 I'll have perma-Dom going reliably if I'm vigilant with Hasten. By 50, with a few purple sets swapped in, I'll usually have full perma-Dom where it refreshes without me having to click Hasten at all. Despite this, I always take Hasten to get long recharge AoE controls and other good powers up as quickly as possible. I also try to build for personal defence, as it can save your skin while you establish control in an alpha strike. I aim for good Defence values, and try to cap S/L Resistances to 75%, since this covers a lot of the big heavy damage hits in the game Basic Setup I put Domination on auto, and take Hasten early I put them both in a "utility tray" with things like Long Range Teleporter, next to my main three trays, so I can see them. I then add a couple of binds: \e bind q powexecname Domination \e bind e powexecname Hasten I've found auto powers don't always fire immediately, and sometimes you can lose Domination from not clicking it fast enough. Activate Hasten manually whenever it's up. I use the Powers->Combat Attributes panel to display my Last Chance to Hit, Global Recharge and Melee, Ranged and AoE Defence. I set Options->Windows->Powers: Recharge Indicators to Bottom, so I can see when Domination and Hasten are about to be ready again. Power Pools Speed - must have. Hasten - absolutely take this. You can achieve perma-dom without it, but at perma-Dom levels of recharge Hasten also becomes permanent. You will have some AoE controls and Build Up style powers that you want up as often as possible, so its general benefit is huge. Remember, you can turn off the Visual FX for this at the tailors if you like. Fighting - Dominators get very good values for Red/Def powers, almost level with Tanks/Defenders Kick is a write off, since your primary and secondary are filling your trays with much better clicks than this. I keep it in my tray as brawl-on-steroids, and found it handy at early levels. Tough takes both +Def uniques for 6% straight away, and will help you get to 75% S/L resists with a Epic armor. (60% for both powers slotted, 7.5% for the P2W buffs, and another 7.5% from set bonuses) Weave adds 7% Defence and gives you 12.5% Recharge if you slot 1 LoTG unique and 5 Red Fortunes. Leadership - Almost always take this. Manouvers is about +5% defence slotted, and can take a LotG and 5x Red Fortune. Tactics is great for preventing blindness and making your attacks land, very important when you rely on active defence. Vengeance opens up later as another LotG mule. Concealment - maybe Grant Invisibility and Infiltration are LotG mules, especially if you're not going with Psionic Mastery Flight/Leaping - maybe Hover/Fly or Combat Jumping, adds another LotG mule plus 2.5% defence or so Epic Pools Ice Mastery Defender-level Sleet, around every 30 seconds (down from 120 base) with your big recharge bonus! This is very hard to pass up despite not contributing to the main aims of this build type. Ice Armor will help cap your defence against S/L, but you lose the chance to cap S/L resistance. Psionic Mastery Link Minds is another +7% Defence, almost perma. (Note it can't be slotted for recharge, but is affected by global recharge) With a Power Boost style power this becomes almost 10%) And it's a LotG mule slot. Indomitable Will - the mez protection is already covered by perma-Dom, but capped Psi Defence and another LotG mule slot are useful. Mind over Body - I prefer a resistance armor, since you can get to 75% S/L resist fairly easily on Dominator values. Primal Forces Mastery Energy Torrent and Explosive Blast can take the Force Feedback +Recharge proc and have a 35% and 18% chance of triggering if they hit, giving +100% recharge for 5 seconds. (Slot with the FF proc and 5 x Positron's leaving out the Dam/Rech one?) This effect doesn't stack, but can be up for a decent percentage of time if you're steamrollering on a team. Energy Torrent does Knockdown, Explosive Blast does Knockback, so you may want to slot it with a KB to KD. Temp Invulnerability will get you close to the S/L resist cap along with Tough, maybe to 75% with a few incidental set bonuses. You can take different Epic sets in different builds if you want to experiment, and have the inf to burn. IO sets to chase This was my shopping list before playing my new holiday project Pink Topaz: Ascendancy of the Dominator: +8.75% Recharge and +3.125% Ranged Def at slots 5 and 6. Put this in a Stun or Fear power, or an immobilise even Holds: Basilisk's Gaze: 4 slots give +7.5% recharge and 1.25% Ranged Def. Good for both single target and AoE hold Confuse: Malaise's Illusions +6.25% Recharge and +3.125% Ranged Def Stuns: Stupefy +6.25% Rech at 5 slots, +3.125% Ranged Def at 6 (but this means adding knockback to your power) Spectral Terror: Cloud Senses for +6.25% at 4 slots, ranged Def at 6 slots Pets: Expedient Reinforcement: +6.25% at 4 slots, ranged Def at 6 slots Melee attacks: Crushing Impact +5% at 5 slots Melee AoE: Obliteration +5% at 5 slots (and +3.125% Melee Def at 6) Ranged Attacks: Decimation +6.25% at 5 slots Snipes: Sting of the Manticore: +2.5% Ranged Def and +7.5% Recharge at 5 slots Dominating Grasp: Maybe use the unique Fiery Orb later on. But no Recharge bonus means don't slot this set. I'll usually slot just enough pieces to get the recharge bonus until the slot-rich late-30's and early 40's, when I'll add in the extra pieces for defence bonuses. Other sources of +Recharge - The P2W buff give you +15% Recharge. These cost Level*Level*1000 per hour, and you can buy up to 8 hours worth. They are not crazily expensive when you're levelling up. The first batch, costing a mere 8,000 usually lasts me until level 20. The next batch at 20 would be 3.2 million, and lasts well into the 30's - Base Empowerment gives you +20% for 90 minutes from using a Base Empowerment Station. Use TAXI-4000 or ZONE-8888 as good practical bases that are easy to remember, with simple layouts Ingredients are any set of: (Clockwork Winder, Boresight, Temporal Sands) (Alchemical Silver, Improvised Cybernetic, Symbol) (Ruby, Kinetic Weapon, Destiny) - The Force Feedback +Recharge proc. This gives you +100% recharge for 5 seconds. Its unreliable, but hefty, and can have considerable uptime if you're spamming AoE Knockback powers such as the Primal Force Mastery attacks or Psionic Tornado. You won't want to rely on this for perma-Dom, but it gives you more breathing room in heavy combat. Defence: My baseline is: P2W Buff +5% Fighting +13% for slotted Weave and the Steadfast and Gladiator's Armor unique IOs in Tough Manouvers +5% Combat Jumping or Hover: 2.5% Total: 25.5%, so you're capped with a medium Luck. Add Link Minds and you're capped with a small Luck, and probably capped vs Ranged at all times with the sets listed above. Example at Level 27 (Pink Topaz, Earth/Energy/Primal Forces) Fossilize: Basilisk's Gaze x4 Salt Crystals: Sandman Heal IO Stalagmites: Ascendancy of the Dom x6 Earthquake: Rech IO Volcanic Gasses: Basilisks Gaze x4 Bonesmasher: Crushing Impact x5 Whirling Hands: Obliteration x5 Power Up: Rech IO Total Focus: Crushing Impact x5 Fly: Fly SO Hover: LotG +Rech Kick: Range SO Tough: Steadfast & GA +Def IO's Hasten: 2 x Rech IO Defence: +13.5% (+19% Ranged) Recharge: +46.25% (+81.25% w/ P2W and base buffs) One day in, and I'm already chaining Domination regularly. I got 4 Dominations in a row during the level 20-29 Hero Tips Alignment Mission (big map, 3 bosses, Blast Furnace and Nocturne), which felt wonderful. By level 35 I'll have 20%/26% defence and 68%/103% recharge, so keeping perma-Dom up if I pay attention to Hasten. By level 50 it's +98%/133% recharge, with maybe another 10% as I start to invest in purples, so into the world of perma-Dom without Hasten (or easing up on the P2W buff as it gets more expensive) This lifestyle is expensive. If you're looking to make some decent influence while mainly fighting/committing crime, acquire merits by doing Task Forces, Giant Monsters and story arcs, buy Enhancement Converters and list for 1 inf. You'll get almost 1 million per 5 merits. If you want to devote more time to making more inf (like I do) use those converters to upgrade common recipes that you craft into rares, and convert those into juicy rares! See the Marketing forum for examples. Happy Dominating!

Nearly every character I have does the Spelunker flashback mission for the Atlas Medallion I'll also use it to get Anti-Matter for Portal Jockey ( and to get Shrouded and Multidimensional. ) I used it once to farm Fake Nemesis robots with some level 40 arc. And occasionally I solo the old Positron Task Force via Flashback. I've contemplated running a solo arc like Freakalympics sometimes, but I don't think I've ever actually done it.

I kind of like Synapse the way it is. And Citadel, and even Numina with her stupid hunts. I only ever play them when they're the weekly task force (so 122 merits counting Babbage for Synapse). The more modern streamlined content like Penny Yin is cool, but there's a certain sense of achievement with the less friendly older content? I think the game would suffer from losing this... chewier content? I always have a bit of dread, followed by elation at getting a team together, followed (90 minutes later) by elation at actually finishing it and getting the badge. I don't get that with Penny Yin. Similarly, should Anti-Matter and Siege be rolled into the Maria Jenkins arc to make Portal Jockey easier? I'd say no - I like gathering the accolades to involve a bit of hierarchical planning and tough moments. As long as the team gets talking (in or out of character) about something other than how much they hate the task force, the time flies by. The only time I didn't enjoy Synapse was on a team where none of us had decent AoE damage. That could have been solved by a group shopping trip to get Plasmatic Tasers and Hand Grenades. End issues can be mitigated a lot by the supergroup base buff too, which should last almost the entire task force.

I moved to Champions Online. After not being super-impressed with it at launch, it had really picked up by the time I went back. The lack of content compared to here wasn't great, and the support powersets were a bit lacking (although being able to cast 6000 hp Protection Fields with the right build was cool) but it made a very good substitute for CoH. There were a number of things it did better than CoH, which shouldn't be surprising since it was a second attempt by many of the same people. I met some cool people there, had some of my best roleplaying experiences ever, and will always look back fondly on my time there.

Ice, Earth and Elec are probably the lowest damage primaries. That said, its not like it used to be, and you can make any of them solo-able with say the Sorcery pool's Arcane Blast and Sands of Mu, Plasmatic Taser and other free powers. Earth is a pretty good choice, in that it adds a lot of -Def to help those temp powers hit. (But doesn't let you slot Lady Grey or Shield Breaker damage procs, which would have been even better.) Out of the secondaries you listed: Cold is great - you can use everything except the ally shields on yourself. A procced-out Infrigidate becomes your snipe, kind of. Electric likewise, if you take the pet to bounce chains off. Force Field is better than it used to be, with -Res in Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb these days, and obviously the best self protection set out of these. Pain and Poison are both decent. I'd choose between Earth/Cold and Earth/Poison if you're planning a solo and duo character. (Empathy is the ultimate duo powerset btw, but tied with Sonic for the worst solo set)

Oh yes! You'll sometimes get a message saying TARGET BLOCKED but most of the time if you're in range, you can port to your target in another room. I heard of Green Machine - they're what inspired me to try Empathy duos. And to be honest, in both cases we stopped playing somewhere in the 40s because it was too easy. Double Manouvers and Power-Boosted Fortitude put us near the defence cap, we had insane regen and recovery, full mez protection and capped S/L Resistance from Tough and Temp Invuln. The game just became too easy really. 🙂

Good write-up on Empathy, Doc. Agreed, recharge is everything on this set. Slot for it however you can, eg Luck of the Gambler unique plus 5 x Red Fortune in Fortitude. Take Leadership to get Manouvers and Vengeance for two more LotG's, and so on. Use the P2W boost and the Supergroup base boost if you can for an extra 35% Recharge all up. As to who to Adrenalin Boost - I usually look at it from a Recharge point of view. Blasters will get more nukes in, Controller will get more AoE mezzes. This often precludes AB-ing the Tank, unless they're a Shield Tanker. But like you say, it's also a case of watching people's health and energy bars and seeing who needs help. One other option is if there's another Empath on the team, shoot them a tell and see if they're up for mutual AB-ing. This can lead to perma-double auras, and double Fortitude all round if you're both good. (I've played dedicated Empathy duos with a couple of special friends, and that is a very fun project!) One thing I'm keen to try on my next Empath is to use teleport binds. bind q "powexeclocation target Teleport" This means when your team split, you can keep supporting both groups. See someone's health dip? Shift+<Team Index>, Q, Heal, maybe Fortitude if they need it, and then select another teammate to return to your previous group. Maps have to get pretty big for this not to work. It also allows you to keep Fortitude order. II try to keep the next teammate in my head for Fort-ing, and often target through them once Fort is recharging, so I can hit it as soon as its ready. It always annoys me a bit when teams split up and make this harder, 'porting may be the answer. The old Port-and-Fort! 😄

Yeah, I'd just drop a Recharge in Combat Teleport. I'd never add an extra slot to it.

I've taken 15 Defenders to 50, and counting. I think the biggest surprise for me was Jenny Foxgloves, Nature/Ice Blast. Entangling Aura and Freeze Ray let me hold entire groups plus a boss very quickly. And then Ice Storm and Blizzard are perfect for taking them all down without anyone running away. Both sets work for bigger tougher groups where you're going to be in one spot for more than a few seconds, allowing you to make the most of Nature's recovery/regen patch.

I had a great time in Champions Online - some of my best MMO fun ever. CoH narrowly beats it due to: 1) better support powersets and 2) better teaming experience 3) more content to play through. But Champions was a great attempt at updating the CoH formula

I remember this being a "feature" way back on live, in that I could stick the Ragnarok: Chance for Knockdown purple in Crushing Field and spam it to keep knocking enemies over. (Back then procs had a flat chance of proccing, 33% in this case) These days, it's just annoying, and I agree it should be changed.

I've made Blasters with 45% Ranged Defence early-on, on a modest-ish budget. 6% - Tough (Steadfast IO and Gladiator's Armor IO) 5.5% - Weave (slotted) 2% - Hover or Combat Jumping (1 slot) 3.5% - Manouvres (slotted) That's 17%, you need another 28% from set bonuses. Maybe go with: 3.75% - full set of ThunderStrike (x3) 2.5% - 5 piece Sting of the Manticore (x1) 3.75% - full set of Mako's Bite (x2) 4% - full set of Artillery (x2) (Gymnastics adds another 2% or so) The Blaster IO sets will also help if you've got enough money for them. You'll lose some opportunities for Recharge bonuses or other goodies. On more expensive builds I've been able to cap Defence to Ranged and Melee (Touch of Death, Unbreakable Guard and Obliteration) while taking a Resistance epic armor.

I have to admit I quite like Sonic Resonance. It's a set I play when I feel like I haven't been teaming enough. 🙂 I've done: - Sonic/Water Defender - Sonic/Radiation Defender (ultimate offensive debuffer, loved this one!) - Earth/Sonic Controller Adding 55% Resistance to everything except Psi to the whole team is huge, considering you're adding to everyone's existing resistances, and often capping people. I always got the feeling it was balanced with Sonic Blast, and came out underperforming compared to the overperforming blast set. When your blast set debuffs resistance better than your primary, something's up. If I could change it... 1) Sonic Siphon needs to do something else as well. Maybe a -Def debuff, which would allow us to slot Achilles Heel in there? Maybe add a radius to it like the Poison debuffs got? At the moment it often feels like a waste of animation time. Even just up the value of the debuff a bit, but make it more than a single target, no other effects version of debuffs many other sets get. Time and Pain, for example, get a once-per-spawn-with-good-recharge AoE -Def/-Res, whereas Sonic gets to ping at individual targets and still deliver less -Res if you account for the Achilles proc. 2) The Psi-hole kind of sucks, and feels very Issue 5. Clarity needs something else. Give Clarity a big +Psi Resist, 30% base maybe?

This sounds like it could be fun! I found a cool trick on my Symphony/Kinetics character (also combining Kinetics with a Cone heavy set) and it worked really well. Take Combat Teleport and set up binds to move in and out of combat quickly. I did: /bind q "powexeclocation target Combat Teleport" to close in on enemy ready to Transfuse/Transfer/Fulcrum /bind e "powexeclocation back:30 Combat Teleport" to back away ready to fire off cones.